This section is based upon the unit of work in Discovering Democracy, Nazi Germany: A Democracy Destroyed. It highlights a number of issues about the rise of extremist behaviours when a democracy is not functioning. Two of these issues are outlined below.

• The importance of tolerance and diversity as essential components of democracy. Democracy requires diversity for it to be healthy. And diversity requires acts of tolerance. Democratic people therefore have to promote and protect these essential components (diversity and tolerance) as they help maintain their values and beliefs
• The ownership of democracy by the citizens. Citizens have rights and responsibilities within a democracy. Citizens need to cherish their rights and responsibilities and act upon them, based on information and skills. Again, this ownership is important for tolerance as a social mechanism, because by owning their democracy citizens are actively promoting and protecting diversity and behaving with tolerance.

The loss of democracy and the practice of intolerance leads to personal, national and international consequences. Nazi Germany is one example, but there are many others:

• 1900s: In different times throughout this period, the segregation of people based on ethnicity in the United States of America and Australia
• 1940s: The Gulags of the Soviet Union
• 1950s: McCarthyism and the anti-Communist push in the USA
• 1960s: The apartheid system in South Africa
• 1970s: Attempted genocide by Idi Amin in Uganda and Pol Pot's "killing fields" in Cambodia
• 1980s: Attempted genocide of the Kurds in Iraq
• 1990s: Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo or militia violence in Timor

"It is estimated that at least 60 million people have died or been maimed (emotionally and physically) in wars and human rights abuses since 1945. The number of victims continues to climb." ("Human Rights", One world)

Overview

In 1871 the German states federated becoming the nation state, Germany, ruled by the Kaiser. German unification was part of a wider political process that happened throughout the 19th century across Europe, that was the formation of nation states.

From 1871 to 1945 Germany had a number of political systems as its form of rule: a monarchy, a democracy and a dictatorship, in that order. The pivotal point of change for this study is post World War I, from 1918 to 1933, where Germany's attempt at democracy, its slide into dictatorship and the consequences of this dictatorship occur.

World War I left Germany a defeated country, in political turmoil. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles imposed in 1919 by the victorious allies aimed to punish Germany and destroy what strength it had left after its defeat. Part of Germany's conditions of surrender was that a democratic parliamentary system was to be its form of government. It was called the Weimar Republic.

But democracies need vigilance and active participation by their people in order to survive. There was no tradition of democracy in Germany and there were many opponents to the new system, some people felt that they had lost their status and power in this new system and other people felt the new democracy was a puppet of the Western Allies.

The Reichstag's volatility and instability, from 1919 to 1933, helped fuel this mistrust in the successive Weimar governments. In this period there wasn't one political party that could claim a parliamentary majority, pass legislation and effectively govern the country.

The cost to Germany of reparations, combined with French Occupation to force these payments throughout the 1920s, led to much bitterness and economic instability. Moreover, when the Great Depression hit in 1929, the German people turned away from the democratic parties in sufficient numbers to allow the rise of extremist political parties.

In 1932 the National Socialist German Worker's Party—Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP, Nazi Party—won 203 of the 608 seats in the Reichstag. This allowed Adolf Hitler (leader of the Nazi Party) to form a government with the Social Democrats who had gained 133 seats. Hitler was not yet the leader of Germany, but very close to it. His chance came in 1933, when through backdoor political deals, with a number of people and parties, he was appointed Chancellor.

Through a series of Nazi actions, during 1933, German democracy was destroyed. Hitler became the leader of a totalitarian regime that was supposed to establish the Third Reich. But instead it lead the German people through terror, repression and persecution; and eventually into World War II. This war was to lead to the deaths of at least 50 million people, human rights abuses on a larger scale than had ever been seen before in human history, and over 20 million displaced people in Europe and Asia.

Through a series of focus questions, democracy and how it can be lost, are explored by studying the loss of democracy in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler.

• What are the features of a healthy democracy?
• How and why was democracy lost in Germany in 1933?
• Which people resisted the Nazis?
• What are the key features of a democracy and how did the Nazis take them away?
• How is democracy in your country protected?

The election that followed [the 1928 election], in 1930, was the first signal of decline for the Weimar Republic. What no one anticipated happened. The Nazis pulled off a major political victory by increasing the number of parliamentary seats from 12 to 107. This result sent shock waves through the political system and almost obscured the sizable increase of the Communists, who went from 54 to 77 seats in the Reichstag.

 

Part of the reason for the Nazi landslide could be found in the constitution itself, namely the provision for proportional representation. Under this system a certain number of seats were assigned to a party in the Reichstag, depending on the total percentage of the popular vote a party received. If it had been a matter of single-man constituencies, the National Socialists could not have won much more than about 20 seats. In no district did they poll more than 40 per cent of the vote. But under proportional representation their national popular vote percentage of a mere 18.3 gave them 107 deputies.
Western New England College

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